Archiving the Digital Transformation – the Siemens Xcelerator Launch 2022

+++ Digitize the World, Transform the Everyday +++

Digital transformation is without doubt one of the key developments in our present time. It not only gives us new opportunities to accelerate our daily working routines, but also challenges our way of thinking by encouraging us to be open-minded about new innovations to come.

In response to the challenges of the digital age, Siemens has developed the digital business platform Siemens Xcelerator to help make digital transformation available for everyone. By providing the necessary tools, partners, and technologies, Siemens Xcelerator ensures their customers stay ahead of the curve as part of the digital world.

+++ Siemens Historical Institute, Archive of Siemens +++

Staying ahead in the digital world is also crucial for archival work – especially when you’re working for a leading international tech company like Siemens, which has one of the biggest company archives worldwide.

The Siemens Historical Institute knows its responsibility of being the historical backbone of Siemens. We’re archiving and storing hundreds of thousands of paper documents, photographs, and handwritten letters.

Additionally, we’re aware of our responsibility to keep up with the new standards of digital born documents that are produced for social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Hence, we’re working hard to come up with new innovative solutions to integrate those digital assets in our archive as well.

+++ Xcelerate the Future, Archiving the Xcelerator +++

The Siemens Xcelerator launch in June 2022 was accompanied by four main social media campaigns across various channels. Planned and published via the content management system Sprinklr, the source material included more than 700 messages and over 1.400 digital assets - all of them relevant for our archival work.

But in comparison to traditional physical documents the preservation of digital documents comes with specific challenges that need to be considered.

Firstly, social media content is unpredictable. Once published, it’s uncertain for how long the content will stay online. Therefore, it’s crucial for us to back up the preferred material via the different export functions provided by the social media platforms.

Secondly, when it comes to the actual preservation of documents published online, a major obstacle is the variety of layouts and formats used by the social media platforms. Thus, it’s not guaranteed by current standards that the exported post mirrors the original one in layout, content, and function.

On the other hand, new tools and applications are already in place to circumvent those issues.

Looking at Sprinklr for instance, for our project of archiving the Xcelerator campaign it was possible to secure every single message regarding the Xcelerator launch in the best digital archive format available. Simultaneously, we also got access to the metadata that are needed for the import in our data management system Saperion.

+++ The Fluid Archive, Path to Future +++

But how do we ensure that digital content can be archived in a future-proof manner?

Social media content is fluid, it changes its appearance through comments, likes and editing functions. Once archived, the social media content becomes a static snippet of an otherwise organic medium.

Just imagine a new kind of long-term archive that is equally as fluid and organic as the social media platforms it’s archiving – an archive that functions like a digital twin, that is permanently in communication with the equivalent source material – always-on, AI-driven, and self-growing.

Only a dream? Maybe. We’re still in an early phase of the digital transformation. Not only in business, but also in archiving. It’s time again to pioneer as Werner von Siemens did when he developed his electrifying innovations during the industrial revolution.

Siemens Xcelerator opened the path to the digital future, and the Siemens Historical Institute gladly takes the opportunity to not only document this revolution, but also be part of it.